Facts about Atlantic Trash Island

The Pacific
Garbage Patch is not alone

The Pacific
Garbage Patch is not alone

Unbelievably, there are is another floating island of garbage
in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Sargasso Sea. It is not as big or as popular as
the Texas-sized Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but it poses the same health risk
to animals, birds, other marine mammals and us.

The Sargasso sea is bounded by the North Atlantic
Current, the Canary Current, the North Atlantic Equatorial Current and the Gulf
stream. These currents carry the trash thrown into the ocean into the Sargasso
Sea – where it gets trapped and accumulates.

The NOAA has conducted studies of these trash islands,
including 5 other ocean gyres in the world. The trash soup is a collection of
pelagic plastic particles, consumer products and sludge. The plastic particles are so small that when
the water is rough, you won’t even see it, but it’s there. Some research
studies say that there are 200,000 bits of trash per square kilometer. What you
see in the surface is just a portion of what’s there, since plastic gets pushed
down below the surface.

Trash islands are not islands that you can walk on.
They’re more like a collection of garbage that gets stuck in one location
because of the ocean gyres. It’s a collection of our trash such as abandoned
fishing gears, bottle caps, toothbrush, plastic bags and so on.

Since plastic doesn’t biodegrade, what is thrown into
the ocean will just photo-degrade into little bits of itself. It will always be
there. Trillions of these plastics get trapped in the trash island.

The danger
of plastics floating in the ocean

DDT, PCB and other toxic chemicals do not dissolve in
water. However, they can be absorbed by plastic just like a sponge. Just
imagine that each of the trillion micro plastic particles have absorbed some of
the chemicals floating around in the ocean.

Since they’re very miniscule, they are mistaken as
food by fish, seabirds and other marine animals. Once ingested, scientists
speculate that the toxins can seep from the plastic into fish tissue. If the fish
don’t die from ingesting the plastic, they will be contaminated.

Now, these small fish gets eaten by larger fish, the
kind that is sold in the market. Once the bigger fish eats the contaminated
fish, it also acquires the toxins – in greater numbers even, since they have a
pretty large appetite… and then the fishermen catches the big fish and we cook
them in our kitchen and feed it to our families.

The rest of the animals die since the plastic
accumulates in their stomachs. The horror is that even when the body of the
animal decomposes… the plastics are still there.

Can we
clean up the ocean?

As much as 80% of marine debris comes from land. 20%
comes from ocean going vessels. Since we are mainly responsible for them, can
we clean up these trash islands?

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it sounds. There
have been some efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to capture the
industrial plastic pellets in the Atlantic ocean. The effort lessened the
number somewhat – but pellets only make up less than 10% of the trash out
there. There’s too much material scattered over a too large an area to make a
significant impact.

Experts say that throwing out a net into the ocean
will also capture millions of marine animals along with the trash. That would
be defeating the purpose.

What can we
do?

The solution is to minimize the waste here on land and
to properly dispose of our trash. Policies on recycling and disposal should be
strengthened and reinforced.